Two Air Force Pilots and a Pulsing Light over Pittsburgh

A cold front had forced Maj. Richard J. Gedeon and Capt. George P. Arns to divert. In the early hours of 11 February 1952 they were bringing a T-11 down towards Greater Pittsburgh Airport at about 5,000 feet. Gedeon was a senior pilot at the headquarters of Tactical Air Command, Arns a senior pilot with the 47th Bomb Wing. Between 03:00 and 03:15 they saw a brilliant light, yellow shading to orange and shaped like a comet, high at their one o'clock and heading roughly the opposite way, to the south.

Their first thought was an aircraft on fire. As it passed they saw that it pulsed regularly every one to two seconds. It flew straight and level at about the speed of a jet and made no sound. It stayed more than five miles away, above a cloud build-up of 12,000 to 15,000 feet, and was in sight for about a minute before it went beyond the clouds. Gedeon said it reminded him of the buzz bombs he had seen in Belgium, though with a much larger flame.

What is on the record

The case is Project Blue Book Unknown no. 1052. Its file holds an argument. ATIC's Blue Book Report No. 5 judged the "description similar to meteor". On 6 May 1952 TAC intelligence wrote back that "the conclusions arrived at are in error". The path, it said, was straight rather than a meteor's arc, and the light had stayed in view for about a minute. An experimental rotating marker light belonging to Capital Airlines was also raised, but only as conjecture. The case stayed unknown.

The same Blue Book folder holds an unrelated report from the next night. Two MATS C-47 pilots made it near Baltimore and Washington, and it is not part of this case.

NICAP lists the sighting as BB 1052. Berliner's list of Blue Book unknowns spells the pilot "Gedson". The file has Gedeon. Johnson's calendar and the Hatch database also carry it.

Why it sits where it does

L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD: a released government record names who saw it. Gedeon and Arns, both senior pilots, are the witnesses it names, and their account stands alone in the archive. The tier measures sourcing, not truth. What pulsed across the sky above the clouds is not resolved here.